On Tuesday 11th September 2012, Smoky Simon met with 20 members of “Garin Machal”. These young men mainly from the USA (one from the UK and one from Canada), are in Israel prior to volunteering for the 14-month program with the IDF in a Machal-Nachal framework.

As they had a tight schedule they were not able to visit the Machal exhibition at Beit Hatfutsot as we had hoped, but will do so at a later date. Smoky met with them at the Independence Park in Tel Aviv. He gave them a talk on the War of Independence and Machal’s role in this very fateful war.

Baruch, the highly-motivated organizer of this group, has made contact with World Machal in the past. A few years ago, at Baruch’s request, Smoky and Tzemach met with a group of Aish Hatorah.

In the last few years there has been a yearly intake of 300 new Machalniks.